Style & Substance on keeping New Year’s resolutions

Happy New Year to our North Countryman and Burgh readers! We can all relate to past New Year’s Resolutions successes and failures and we have decided to add a new spin to how to go about keeping your commitment to yourself and meeting success in the NEW YEAR!

There are traditional resolutions that help us to ring in a New Year and new beginnings...losing weight, eating better, exercising more, being kinder, being more organized, the list of traditional resolutions often has a focus on self-improvement. We encourage and applaud self-improvement; however, we also applaud the idea of taking the bow when it is earned - to us that means recognizing your strengths and acknowledging all that you do well. We believe that beginning strong will help you to stay strong as you work toward achieving a goal….and enjoy the journey. A few tips to help along the way, doing just one of these could be life changing!!

• Be accountable to yourself…and if you are good about recruiting the support of others and willing to take their coaching, share your resolution. Write down your progress toward your goals every day. Sharing your progress with yourself or with others helps maintain focus on the goal.

• Go easy on yourself…don’t start out with an impossible to sustain resolution or idea…build the new year’s commitment in stages, build the new habit in a manageable way for the first 28 days and then increase the intensity.

• Be present to those you are with…give up distracted conversations by focusing on the people you are WITH and not participating when others are not directly engaged with you….by saying…”I see you are busy now, I will talk to you about this when you have the time.” It makes the listener aware that what you are saying is of importance and his or her input matters to you. In line with:

“You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.”— M. Scott Peck

• Choose a favorite quote and use it in your everyday self-coaching.

Two of our favorites are…

“Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you.

Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you.” — unknown

Ten Ways to Love:

listen without interrupting

speak without accusing

give without sparing

pray without ceasing

answer without arguing

share without pretending

enjoy without complaint

trust without wavering

enjoy without punishing

promise without forgetting

body, mind & spirit Winter series

keep the winter blues at bay!

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